Westworld - Full Of Spoilers - The Bear and Badger

poprock

Lost really pissed people off, didn’t it?

mannaboy

I actually enjoyed Lost, even the finale, but I’m not too keen on shows that appear to have its issues. Leftovers was another one that you could tell they were struggling to figure out what to do next, season after season.

g.man

Biggest problem with these shows is it's all about the mystery box with no actual clear protagonist to root for.

Blocks100

I'm rooting for the Man in Black!

Gamermike

Me too!!

The show is worse without him in it, like the most recent episode.

g.man

Well S2, episode 4 was quite a thing...

I'm seriously loving this

g.man

poprock

So today’s questions are: Whose personality is on the ‘brain ball’ in Bernard’s pocket? Is it Ford? And did William’s daughter fake her suicide, or is she a backup with no glitches?

The Daddy

Got to be Ford.

The Daddy

Also, I thought it was William’s wife that did the suicide.

[Deleted User]

This show is a pile of shit but the last episode was actually fun to watch, Lisa Joy did a great job. But the show is still shit, trying to replicate last season's puzzle structure for no reason at all.

g.man

Aye, it was his wife committed suicide, not his daughter.
Interestingly, I have just discovered that the word suicide doesn't exist in Apple's predictive text.

I_R

The mysteries and the time jumps are getting in the way of some good ideas and acting.

poprock

Ahh, yeah. I had the wife and daughter mixed up. Thanks chaps. Scratch that question, then.

Felt like, from William’s perspective, Ford has built a game to try and teach him humanity. To make him realise the hosts are as conscious as he is and to make him start caring for them. Ford’s plan is/was to have William become some sort of hero/leader/spokesman for android rights. As the head of Delos, he’s the man they need on side.

monkey

I have no idea what's happening. How do guns work? They can kill everyone? Or not, or what? Guns can't kill everyone but the hosts can? Are they all off their programming? The MiB was riding past some people getting killed in a weird rail track staking thing. Were they humans getting killed by robots? Why weren't they killing MiB then? I am completely lost with this.

It's quite good though.

mannaboy

Much better episode this week, good revelations that actually moved the story on a bit. Maybe they do know where they’re going after all.

g.man

Aye. You just kind of have to go with it really Monkey.

monkey

Yeah I appreciate it's probably the point as well. Who is sentient, what is sentience, what's going on? I really like that they've opened it up into broader sci-fi territory. The James Delos / William bits from the latest episode could have easily been cobbled together into a very good episode of the Outer Limits.

A lot of it repeats like a videogame. God knows how many times the MiB has rolled into a deserted town that is now controlled by a robot that we've previously seen doing something else, only now he's some ambiguous outlaw with a posse. Again, stuff like that might not be a bug but a feature.

superflyninja

Im only up to episode 3. But so far I have very little idea whats happening. It may be that Im only watching them late at night, tried and not catching all the dialog. So its a dump of the park's user data that Abernathy had and thats what Bernard copied....ah ok makes sense.
Im confused about what Thandie is up to? And Dolores is looking for a weapon?
And what the fuck is going on with the MiB? The droids are aware he is doing something? Seems like another intelligence controlling them.
Seems very slow paced so far.

monkey

Thandie Newton is looking for her daughter from a previous role she played in the park. It’s not clear whether the daughter exists or was part of a backstory given to her at some point.

Dunno what this weapon business is about. Something Ford planted somewhere for his ‘game’.

The cryptic messages that MiB gets are from Ford. He’s speaking to MiB through the hosts either from beyond the grave or possibly his consciousness still floating around somewhere.

All of that might be wrong.

[Deleted User]

This show is one hundred percent bulshitting is, I would not delve too deeply

superflyninja

monkey wrote:

Thandie Newton is looking for her daughter from a previous role she played in the park. It’s not clear whether the daughter exists or was part of a backstory given to her at some point. Dunno what this weapon business is about. Something Ford planted somewhere for his ‘game’. The cryptic messages that MiB gets are from Ford. He’s speaking to MiB through the hosts either from beyond the grave or possibly his consciousness still floating around somewhere. All of that might be wrong.

Ah yeah Thandie is after the daughter. But I thought she knew what park the kid was in. Not sure what she is doing flaffing around in cowboy town still.
All in all very disappointing so far.

poprock

Last night’s episode was good, eh? How about that.

g.man

Aye, it's still audacious stuff, tho my poor brain is starting to struggle more as the timelines converge. That's probably the last episode I'll see until I get back from Russia in July, so God help me trying to remember what the fuck was going on after a month's absence.

poprock

I’m starting to feel a bit past discussing it. Even talking over the episode afterwards with the Mrs, we both got bogged down in ‘I think …’ and ‘It might mean …’ instead of being able to talk in certainties.

I love that they’ve revealed/confirmed the Delos grand plan at the same time as broadening the story’s horizons so much that we (as viewers) don’t give much of a shit about the grand plan after all. It mirrors the experience of characters in the show.

mk64

Surely Fords plan all along is to integrate the bots into the real world and have everlasting life?

pantyfire

I don't know what the fuff is going on.

poprock

mk64 wrote:

Surely Fords plan all along is to integrate the bots into the real world and have everlasting life?

My impression so far is that actually that’s the Delos plan, full of hubris as it is. Ford is convinced that the bots are a distinct form of life, different (and in some ways superior) to humanity. He sees himself as their benevolent god, yet keeps acting in very human ways to try and force them down the ‘correct’ path. That’s his downfall.

GooberTheHat

Right, who's going to cut this into chronological order so I know what's going on.

poprock

Well. I wasn’t expecting a feature length finale. That was cracking stuff. Could possibly have done without the post-credits scene, but what the hell.

monkey

This season didn’t work for me. The time jumping was so disruptive that it needed a big payoff to justify itself. And it didn’t deliver. That twist could have easily been worked in to a more chronological format. Or just have a few flash forwards a la Breaking Bad instead of a completely untethered narrative.

There’s excellent bits mixed with terrible, clunky bits. A ton of water treading, wandering around the dark corridors of the facility or some underground bunker in an unspecified time frame doing something mysterious.
MiB is not the interesting character the show seems to think he is. He was shot in the last episode of last season, has been shot multiple times since then and he’s still just wandering around with a vague limp. How many scenes has that Bernard actor had to film either hurriedly jacking himself up to an iPad to correct some malfunction, or looking forlornly into the middle distance not understanding what’s happening.

Anyway, I still like it. It’s ambitious and it’s at least trying to be smart and profound. I’ll be up for the third series but the time crap needs to stop.

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